Past Lives, a BSG fanfic

[lily_winterwood]

Here's my first BSG fanfic. Many thanks to laurawillows  for being a smashing beta. Really!

Title: Past Lives
Author: Lily Winterwood
Rating: K or K+. Depends on how you look at it, I guess.
Fandom: BSG
Characters: Bill Adama, Laura Roslin, Saul Tigh, Anastasia Dualla, Felix Gaeta, etc.
Pairings: A/R
Summary: Set during "Sometimes A Great Notion". Saul Tigh discovers there's more to that memory ...
Disclaimer: If I had a penny for every moment I wished I owned BSG, I'd be richer than J.K. Rowling. Unfortunately, BSG still is the property of Ron D. Moore and co.


Past Lives

Earth.

It is a dream destroyed. There had been people there, but they were gone. Destroyed like the Twelve Colonies.

This has all happened before, and it will happen again. Laura Roslin remembers that as she picks a budding plant from the ground, trying not to break down. Not now.

She closes her eyes, willing herself to be seperated from her current state of despondency. A few feet away, she still hears Bill talking with the others. She willingly tunes it out, inhaling the faint scent of the plant.

~~

The small waves crash against the shore as Saul Tigh looks out to the grey horizon. Here on the pebbly beach, he feels something. Something that feels almost as if he has lived here.

He closes his eyes, and a memory springs to his mind.

He is walking down the pavement behind the beach. Behind him stands buildings, tall and proud. He is off to visit the bank, but he feels as if he might as well enjoy the scenery before he does so.

A man stands ahead, with an auburn haired lady in his arms.

 “Do you remember when we first met?” the man asks the lady as she looks up at him, her green eyes shining.

"We met on a plane flight to New York,” she replies, laughing. “Isn’t that the oddest way to meet a husband?”

"Odd doesn’t make it any less significant, Laura,” he answers. “Just think. We’ve been married for three years already.”

"They’ve been the best three years of my life,” she agrees. “I love you, Bill.”

Saul opens his eyes, and he is back on a pebbly beach. There is no happy couple ahead, just ruins. He walks forward, striding with no particular purpose.

~~

Anastasia Dualla bends down to pick up a set of jacks. There were once children here to play with them, she thinks. The thought makes her even more sad.

She sees Tigh up ahead, walking down the beach lost in thought. A ring lies in his footsteps, buried in the gravelly sand for Gods know how long. Dualla picks the ring up as well, tears streaming down her face.

~~

William Adama exhales deeply as Gaius Baltar ends his report. Earth had been nuked two thousand years ago. What is more is the fact that the Thirteenth Tribe seems to be mostly, if not completely Cylon.

It’s the frakking opposite of the Colonies, he thinks. Mostly Cylon, with a few humans trying to fit in. History repeats itself, as it has always done so.

It’s also just too bad that we never frakking learn.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Laura leave the laboratory. He follows.

~~

Frak Pythia, Laura thinks as the book burns before her. Frak her and her prophecies. I followed them, and all I get is a destroyed Earth. We traded one nuked civilization for another.

Life isn’t worth holding onto now that my hopes are all gone, she decides. Frak cancer. Frak Diloxan treatments. Frak all of this ‘Dying Leader’ nonsense. I was wrong. Bill should have not listened to me. He should have fought the Cylons.

She hears him enter, but she doesn’t respond. She hears him talking to her, and she answers in a weary voice.

When Bill tries to comfort her, she pushes him away, mentally withdrawing into a corner. He leaves, and she wishes she could call him back. But she doesn’t. Not now.

As the Book of Pythia burns, Laura closes her eyes again, slowly losing the will to go on.

~~

Saul sits in his quarters, remembering the memory at the beach.

He walks past Bill and Laura, smiling a little. Bill is his coworker and Laura is a teacher. They are friends of his, and he feels happy for them.

The bank is busy as usual, and he walks up to the teller. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. “Saul,” she says simply.

"Ellen,” he replies, looking at the face of his wife.

~~

Dee is dead.

Felix Gaeta is still trying to get used to that fact. He and Seelix gaze at her corpse, numb with shock.

The medics wheel her body to the morgue and hand her belongings over to Lee, who takes the box with a face that would not have looked out of place at a funeral. He opens it and there, at the top of the pile, sits an old wedding ring along with a set of equally old jacks.

~~

Sometimes Bill feels like he couldn’t run anymore. He feels like those foxes, those brutes who gave up and are subsequently washed out to sea.

Even though he feels so frakking weary of all this, he hears Saul advising him to not give up. He shouldn’t end up being washed away like a tired fox. He shouldn’t.

It’s funny how their landing on Earth seems to have evoked a sudden personality switch between him and Saul.

~~

Laura lies on the dais, the charred remains of the Book of Pythia cast aside. She smells the plant and listens to Bill’s voice on the speakers. Sooner or later she will have to get up, but she doesn’t. Not now.

As the message ends, she hears the hatch opening behind her and a set of footsteps entering.

"You once lived on Earth, too,” the voice of Saul Tigh says somewhere above.

Laura sighs and closes her eyes. “Tell me more,” she answers, her voice displaying her weariness.

~~

A bomb falls as Saul exits the bank. The explosion topples a farmer’s market not too far off, as well as a theater. Panicking, he dashes away from the buildings.

Laura and Bill huddle on the beach not too far away from him. Bill is holding her close to him, while blood flows freely from wounds on their bodies. Laura has lost consciousness. “She’s going to be all right. You’re going to be all right,” Saul says, half to reassure them, half to reassure himself. “We’ll all wake up again. We’ll all be reborn. It’s in our nature.”

"Not in ours,” Bill wheezes, his tears mingling with his and Laura’s blood. “I should have told you years ago but I didn’t have the guts to do so. I’m a human. And so is Laura.”

"You’re kidding,” Saul hisses.

Bill merely looks at him. “Good bye,” he says, and slumps.

Saul manages to catch his friend as he falls, gently laying Bill and Laura out on the ground. Tears come to his eyes as he notices that the couple managed to die holding hands. Two silver wedding bands glint on the cold and clasped hands; one of them is simple and the other is adorned with a single diamond.

"Saul!” a voice calls to him above the din of falling bombs and screaming people.

~~

Bill enters as Saul exits the room. Inside, he sees Laura sitting on the dais, fingering a ring while tears flow down her cheeks.

"We had a life together on Earth,” she says quietly, as if she knows he is in the room.

Bill sits down in front of her. “We can still have it,” he says.

Laura doesn’t look up at him. “Dee found my old wedding ring,” she murmurs. “Colonel Tigh managed to get it from Lee after her death.”

She holds the ring up for him to see. Though the silver band was tarnished with age, the diamond still sparkled brilliantly. Just like them.

He looks at her to see her shaking with sobs, and reaches for her. This time, she doesn’t resist.

~~

Saul wades into the water, lost in thought once more. He wants to finish the memory before the Fleet and the cylons jump away.

"Saul!” the voice cries. Saul finds himself running back into the bank, going in the complete opposite direction as everyone else. “Saul!”

In the wreckage, he discovers Ellen. She looks up at him with a mornful expression as he attempts to free her. “It’s okay,” she murmurs. "Everything’s in place. We’ll be reborn again. Together,” she whispers the last part as she reaches for his bloodied face.

He nods numbly. They are not Bill and Laura. They will live on, while their human friends go to some other place. He will probably never see his human friends again, but he will always have Ellen.

With that thought, the last thing Saul is aware of is the sound of an explosion.

~~

Laura lies in Bill’s arms, still gazing at the ring. It is a reminder of a former life. A former life that now is a dream destroyed two thousand years ago. Like Earth.

Earth.

Comments

[sleepismyfriend.livejournal.com]

Awww!!!! I hope to goodness I never have to witness Saul watching Bill and Laura die.

[karuri.livejournal.com]

Nice commenting on Saul and Bill's personality shift. It was so awesome seeing Tigh step up, wasn't it?

Awwwww....Saul and Laura's conversation...you didn't say what he told her, but I felt the bond I felt formed on NC really became a good friendship...nice!

[obsessive-a101.livejournal.com]

This was really nice, and an interesting bit there... with the different possibilities. (^_^) Love transcends all bounds huh?